Gigabyte Slate S1082-CF2 review

The Gigabyte S1082 is a 10.1in tablet that could happily double as a laptop. It runs the full version of Windows 8 and comes with a keyboard. It also has a carry case that acts as a stand, letting you prop up while you’re working. It’s not very compact, being 15mm tall and weighing 790g, but it’s still fairly comfortable to hold in both hands.

It has two USB2 ports, VGA and HDMI display outputs, an SD card reader for removable storage, a Gigabit Ethernet port and separate headphone and microphone jacks. It also has a SIM card slot, which means you can use a 3G internet connection when you can’t use Wi-Fi, but it only supports normal SIM cards, so you’ll need an adaptor to use micro and nano SIM cards.

LOW PERFORMANCE

The S1082 is powered by a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 and 4GB of RAM, which should provide adequate performance, yet it only managed an overall score of 12 in our multimedia benchmark tests, which is a very low score. It can still handle everyday tasks like web-browsing and word processing, but it’ll struggle with anything more demanding.

The S1082’s on-chip graphics processor isn’t particularly suited to regular desktop games, so we weren’t surprised that it couldn’t reach our Dirt Showdown pass mark, even with anti-aliasing disabled and the graphics quality options set to Ultra Low. Less graphically demanding games from the Windows 8 Store were far more playable, and we could run games such as Jetpack Joyride and Radiant Defense very smoothly without any visible slowdown.

The S1082’s main flaw, however, is its dimly lit screen. It has a relatively low 1,366×768 resolution, but its poor viewing angles meant we had to look at it straight on to see anything clearly. When we looked at it from the side or from above, even when it was lying flat on a table, we could barely see anything at all due to such a huge shift in contrast across the screen. The screen’s coating also produced a visible grain effect which made everything look a little fuzzy and pixellated.

Colours appeared washed out in our high-contrast image test, and we couldn’t to pick out much detail in the darker areas of each photo either. Instead, detail gave way to greyish blocks of black, and our solid colour tests revealed that there was a slight tendency for colours to appear darker toward the bottom of the screen and lighter across the top. Whites were similarly grey, and reds, blues and greens also looked drab.

This is a shame because the touchscreen is very responsive. We could tap and open individual files accurately, and we had no trouble using multitouch gestures such as pinch-zooming and opening the Charms bar. Gigabyte has also included an optical finger navigation button, which is essentially a joystick that lets you move the mouse cursor, as well as right and left mouse buttons. We found them a little fiddly to use and preferred to use the touchscreen instead.

Its speakers were not particularly loud, but they’re on par with most laptop speakers.

HITTING KEYS

Its USB keyboard slots neatly into the carry case so you can take it with you on the go. We’d have preferred a Bluetooth keyboard, though, as the supplied keyboard consumes one of the S1082’s two USB ports. The USB cable also makes the unit as whole look cheap. The keyboard feels a little cramped, but that didn’t prevent us using it effectively.

The carry case is made from leather, and has a classier feel than you’d expect from a bundled case. Sadly, it’s a little hard to get the tablet in and out of it, as its rigid, plastic clips are very difficult to move once the tablet’s locked in place. The S1082 is also compatible with the Gigabyte D1080 Docking Station (£129, www.camtechsystems.co.uk) which has a DVD optical drive, speakers and another three USB2 ports.

Sadly, we were very unimpressed with the S1082’s battery, which lasted a mere 3 hours and 26 minutes in our light use test, severely restricting its ability to be used away from the mains. It’s certainly much less than the nine to 10 hours usage we expect to get out of a tablet.

Ultimately, though, the S1082’s main problem is its price. It’s more expensive than the iPad 4 and Google Nexus 10, and it’s too underpowered to be a cheaper alternative to Windows 8 tablets such as the Acer Iconia W700. There’s a slightly cheaper model of the S1082 that has a 500GB hard disk instead of a 64GB SSD, but we’d still prefer to pay more for a good Windows 8 tablet such as the Iconia W700 or less for an iPad 4 or Google Nexus 10.